Beachkofski explained that the (Pentagon’s) Technology Watch/Horizon Scanning project, which is still in development, will be able to mine Patents filings for new technologies as well as university and other research journals to track fresh technologies. Later, analysts will be able to scrutinize each category and determine if there are emerging clusters of technological development which could need further examination. To avoid military surprise from disruptive challenges, the United States will continue to monitor the Asiatic high tech innovation boom in countries such as China and India, who are well positioned to become leaders at the nexus of nano- and bio-information. “One thing of interest is if you went to track technology and found the United States was absent from (that area of science), you’d want to do something about it,” Patrick Thomas, a principal and director of analytics for 1790 Analytics, said.

"As scientific goals grow more
multifaceted, the challenges for research and development lie not only
in the experiments themselves, but also in the transfer of information
among peers.

Enter John Wilbanks, executive
director of the Science Commons initiative, and the six-year-old
innovation of its parent organization, Creative Commons—an intelligent,
understandable copyright that's revolutionizing how everything from
photos to publications are shared. Wilbanks and his team (which
includes Nobel Prize winners Joshua Lederberg and John Sulston) are
focused on three areas where roadblocks to scientific discovery are
most common: in accessing literature, obtaining materials, and sharing
data."